Discussions about O2 and age verification

[Anonymous]

Just received a text from TPTB saying I need to confirm I'm over 18 to view adult material. Until then, it'll remain blocked on my phone. I don't have a credit card so I'll need to do this in store. Just wondering, I have no particular desire to view pornographic material or register to flirt websites on my phone but if I don't have this ban lifted, will it affect my general day-to-day browsing in any way? Otherwise, I won't bother.
Secondly, when did this come about? Never needed to confirm my age in the past. And why couldn't they have sorted this in store when I bought the phone?

[Anonymous]

Thank you, Chris@O2 for taking the time to research this.
It doesn't explain why translate.google.com is still blocked.
Please could you also address why the age verification references the first time that age verification I checked but that subsequent checks will be charged, that credit card details will not be stored for further transactions and the collection of data boasts that i copied from Bango in my last post.
I find it hard to understand why O2 would be giving monies away in this fashion.
Is there really no profit to be made from transactions Bango manage on behalf of "content providers".
Is it possible to arrange for an ethical company to manage this for you, rather than a company which profits from, amongst other distasteful things, pornography?
Thanks once again.
Tom

[Anonymous]

Chris@O2,
I'm afraid that doesn't address all the points raised in this thread.
I'm sure that others will point out the questions that concern them but for me the important issues are.
Why are customers, who have previously age verified, being asked to do so again?
Why are bango being allowed to monitor sites visited for analytics purposes?
Why is the monitoring (for whatever purpose) generating such large numbers of error messages? (The interrupted by host and Sorry! messages)
How much extra data traffic does this redirection generate? And is this being deducted from customers allowances?
Why are customers not informed that a third party will be monitoring the sites they visit?

[Anonymous]

ive had message to age verify after sending sms to adult site for verifaction
i can view adult sites but not sms them why is this
it does say you only need to do it once

[Anonymous]

Finally have the age block lifted so I can finally use Google Translate and Urban Dictionary again! Result.
I asked about Bango (what is the point of that Guru guy who works there???) and no one there knew what I meant by bango.net and suggested I ring customer support instead. I'm personally rubbish at phonecalls so was wondering if anyone else has had luck with this bango issue thru CS before I make the call.

[Anonymous]

Hi all
Apologies for the delayed response. Here’s some more information in response to your replies since my last post.
Firstly, just to clarify, once a customer’s age has been verified there should be no reason to process the verification again.
We’ve chosen to use Bango for reporting on usage of our mobile portals only (including O2 Active) and the information is presented as overall usage and trends. Reporting on individuals isn’t available and we don’t collect any information from the use of non-O2 sites. Any data that Bango collects belongs to O2, not Bango – they don’t pass on any of it to anyone other than O2, unless required to do so by law.
In summary, Bango provide a service to O2 in collecting data relating to the usage of our own portals. All they do with that data is pass it straight to us.
The error messages some people have seen weren’t caused by usage monitoring, or anything to do with Bango. Equipment on the WAP gateway caused the issue, meaning that you could have seen the error messages when viewing any website. We put a fix in place last week which should have substantially reduced the number of errors experienced and we’re sorry for any inconvenience it caused if you were affected.
The credit card details used to verify a customer's age are not retained and are used for this purpose alone. Bango send them directly to their payment processing partner over a secure (SSL) channel and only retain the transaction reference number and success/failure status that they receive in response. Bango are PCI-DSS compliant, in line with the standard requirements of the card payment industry.
In response to further questions about why certain sites are blocked that perhaps shouldn’t be, I’d refer you back to the final point of my original reply. The internet is a big place and some sites may be blocked inadvertently as part of the standard process. Where this happens, we’ll try to get them unblocked as quickly as we can, once we’re made aware of them.
Finally, the formal bit – our privacy policy is available at http://www.o2.co.uk/termsandconditions/o2privacypolicy, and clearly sets out how we collect, store and use customer information.
Thanks
Chris

[perksie]

Comprehensive answer, that does it for me Chris.

[Anonymous]

Ditto. Thanks very much

[Anonymous]

I've been asked to age verify. Yet I've done this previously.
Secondly, the errors are still continuing.
Thirdly, I've seen the bango header momentarily when outside of O2 Active.
I appreciate what the official position is, but as I said much earlier in the thread, in reality this isn't what is happening.

[perksie]

I haven't noticed this prking, I will be interested in Chris's response though.
If it's just a system error, then they need to get it fixed.

[Anonymous]

Its quite frustrating.
And when you add in conflicting responses from people at O2, bango's reputation and their marketing claims which appear to contradict O2; it all becomes very confusing.
Edit.
Because of this I actually moved most of my mobile data use away from O2, a while ago. My new provider happily removed age verification with no payment necessary and no repeat. I can access a mobile internet settings page which gives me control over their proxy (level of compression etc) and I have a range of privacy options available. I've yet to find a mis-categorised page.
I've just tried to use My O2 on O2 Active, guess what ? I got the interrupted by host error!
(I do believe I've just had my first rant - please don't set the bees on me)